Friday, September 10, 2010
Cheer Up, Cheery, Wake Up, Weary
David Culross Peattie, An Almanach for Moderns (September 10):
Some regard it as a noxious weed, but I'm letting it stay for now, as the bees are fond of it.
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In autumn some of the sweetness of spring steals back again. There are the blessed rains, the sharp nights, the mornings smelling of wet loam and winy air as if blown from the mountains. The woods are filling up with clouds of asters. And best of all, the birds return. Few are the voices of the forest, but the robin has taken to singing again his old "Cheer up, cheery, Wake up, weary!" The grackles gather in the wet woods just as they do in March, and from the fields comes a slender, wistful whistling of all songs I know the most poignant except the farewell whistling of the white-throat sparrow. But there is something sad about these songs, something that merely reminds us of a happiness we once knew, that is gone.Asters are now flowering in my garden. Most of them I planted, but I do notice one interloper this fall, what looks to me like Ageratina altissima, commonly known as white snakeroot:
Some regard it as a noxious weed, but I'm letting it stay for now, as the bees are fond of it.
